Natural Running Symposium – Q & A – Part 2

John: Yes, you.

Audience: This is a great discussion, and I have to say my coach is really clever, because he got me to shorten my stride and increase my cadence without any discussion and it worked.

Danny: Simple as that.

Audience: So if you had to explain to me I probably wouldn’t be able to do it, otherwise I’d just do it.

That’s a comment, but my question is, is that the protective features built into Newton, I’m not sure about the other minimalist shoes, do not degrade with time and use. Is that correct?

Danny: That is correct!

John: Yeah!

Danny: Ding!

Yeah! We’ve done a lot of testing. What we’ll do is we’ll test shoes over a thousand miles of impact. Because if it’s on high trail, we’ll only lose a couple of percentages of it’s ability to store and retrieve, over a thousand miles.

So we’ve worked with Doctor Mark Cucuzzella who’s a big marathoner. He’s the guy down in West Virginia. He’ll run in a pair of our basic distance racers, it’s a very light shoe, and he’ll use them like 6-700 miles. One pair of shoes. No problem. And he has the Hallux Rigidus. His first toe joint is completely fused. But because our shoes lever and he lifts of the ground he’s not pushing, he doesn’t continue to damage his arthtritic first metatarsal joint.

So there are a lot of benefits. So even the benefits for people walking, like even in our Guidance series is that, even if you have a bunion or if you have a fused first met, you lever across. You don’t have to bend in the form of the shoe. That’s another beauty about all of our shoes. We have leverage. And we have flexibility in the right place, between your metatarsals and your toes. Most brands don’t even know where to put the flex groove. They put it somewhere directly under your met. That’s not where you’re flexing. You’re flexing between your met and your toes. just look at your foot when you walk across the ground. There is high leverage to your foot when you’re barefoot. We’re just trying to bring all that back, with all the components in our shoes.

But yeah! They’re high mileage shoes. Now the other thing is though, but if you got a pair and you ran in a similar fashion to stabbing the ground and pushing off and pulling back, you’d probably ruin them before their life. But your second pair, you’d probably get it.

So one of our big deals is to get, well they say, “Oh the Newton is so expensive.” They’ll outlast any other shoe. You recover quicker because you have less impact to greater injury turn. So if you want to run faster you will. Those are all benefits that you want them to be. But recovery is huge.

Muscle vibration like, if you take a Vibram and you go out on run on the concrete, then it’s called muscle jiggle or this damage due to micro vibration that occurs when you hit the ground, then all these shockwaves go up to you muscles. So they’re damaging the muscles continuously. If I reduce that, you have less muscle damage. You’re going to recover quicker. So all of our pros have a tough time of running slower, because they’ve always recovered faster. So you have to calm yourself down and say today is a slow easy run, be slow easy. Don’t go out hammering.

John: Yup…

Audience: I’m an old heel striker, but my form improves in a major way running off-road.

Danny: Oh yeah! Sure!

Audience: So I can run on my forefoot off-road.

Danny: Because your brain tells you body you’d better be in balance or you’re going to fall down and bust your lip.

Audience: Right! And it makes a big difference. But on the road, my form will deteriorate back to how I’ve run historically.

Danny: Yeah! You just kind of over-stride, and start that long, slow cadence. But listen to your head. Our bodies know them best. So listen to your head.

So when you get off-road, the first thing you do is shorten up. It’s like, “Okay, there’s rocks, and debris, it’s slick, it’s cross-cant…” All things are going on. Your brain takes over. It’s like shorten up. Light steps. Boom bam! You’re agile all of a sudden. That’s how you’re supposed to run on the road.